OurFamilyWizard’s Brand Refresh: A Bright Future for Co-Parents
At OurFamilyWizard, we’re on a mission to help families living separately thrive. We want to reduce stress by making co-parenting easier for everyone involved: parents, their children, and the professionals who support them.
So today, we’re refreshing our brand. Our new look and feel do a better job aligning our outward identity with our internal mission.
Why change what we’ve been doing for so long?
Pause! Rewind! Of course, the refresh is all about moving forward into a bright future. But we’re building on our storied past, not forgetting it. Our mission will never change.
For over two decades, we’ve been hard at work learning about co-parents’ struggles and joys. That’s the only way we could design authentic tools that solve those struggles and magnify those joys.
We’ve also worked with countless family law professionals to design app features that relieve their stress, making it easier for them to help their clients in meaningful ways.
The brand refresh is a jumping-off point for developing new upgrades, content, and services. “We’re investing heavily in the app,” says Nick VanWagner, CEO, “because we’re dedicated to supporting families, even as their lives change and their needs evolve.”
It started with 3 kids, 2 overlapping vacations, and 1 big idea
Paul Volker made plans to take his kids to Florida over the holidays. Their mom made plans to take them to Mexico.
They had a co-parenting calendar, of course—but it was a notebook carried back and forth between the two houses. The schedule misunderstanding was so frustrating that, ultimately, nobody went anywhere.
Paul had an idea: A computer program that kept a virtual co-parenting calendar and diary that both parents could access online. A single source of truth.
He mentioned the idea to his aunt, a family law lawyer. She knew the program would be useful for family law professionals, too. So she asked her son, Jai Kissoon, to build a web-based program. In 2001, OurFamilyWizard launched as a software brand.
“OurFamilyWizard was founded based on the needs of real families,” said Jai, co-founder and board member. “Back then, there was really nothing on the market that was dedicated to families at all, let alone families trying to navigate divorce or separation.”
Since OurFamilyWizard’s launch, more than one million parents and family law professionals have empowered successful co-parenting by using the platform’s tools to manage schedules, pay expenses, keep a record of communications, and more.
So, how does this brand refresh fit in?
Our long history got us to where we are today: OurFamilyWizard is the leading co-parenting brand. But after two decades without much change to our look and feel, it’s time for a revamp.
To stay relevant, to stay useful, technology has to continually modernize. We’re already doing that with the app—now, we’re doing the same with our external brand look and feel.
What exactly are we refreshing?
Our new logo: Modern and meaningful
We loved our old logo because the swirl and spark represented OurFamilyWizard’s ability to transform a difficult co-parenting situation.
OurFamilyWizard can’t turn your co-parent into a new person. But it can make co-parenting easier by helping you save on legal costs, freeing up your time and emotional energy, and protecting your children from overhearing heated discussions.
So we kept the logo concept but took it into the 2020s. The new logo’s sleek shape represents our commitment to keeping the app on the cutting edge of technology.
Part of the new logo’s wand forms a symbolic arrow. It points onward and upward because we believe co-parenting families can keep moving forward optimistically—even in tough situations. And we want to help.
Our new voice and tone: Friendlier and warmer
If OurFamilyWizard was a person, what kind of personality would it have and how would it talk? What kind of vibe would it give off? We felt like our old voice and tone weren’t quite expressing how we really feel.
So our new voice is friendlier and more empathetic. If OurFamilyWizard was a person, it would be a good friend who’s been co-parenting longer than you and figured some things out along the way.
But it’s not a one-way spout of information (what a bad friend that would be). “We want to foster an ongoing conversation with the co-parenting community,” says Nick. “We want to hear your ideas and tell your stories. By collaborating with family law and mental health professionals, we want to explore solutions to your problems.”
We’re pragmatic, but optimistic. We know co-parenting can be difficult, frustrating, and even deeply painful. We’re not trying to paint over it and make everything look like sunshine and daisies.
But we do believe that even if you’re going through a dark time, the sun will rise again. (And we encourage you to buy yourself daisies.)
Our new colours: Calm and cheery
We designed our new colour palette to create a mood of peace and calmness. Co-parenting can be stressful, and we believe OurFamilyWizard can help you move beyond conflict towards a more peaceful situation.
We even had fun naming our peaceful new colours—like paper and ink, mist and sky. We’re all about stress reduction. But we’re also optimistic, so we have cheery accent colours like goldenrod and peony.
The name OurFamilyWizard: Why we’re keeping it
OurFamilyWizard is classic! Keeping the name makes it easier for co-parents to find us, but it also symbolizes our unending commitment to our unchanging mission.
So what does the name mean?
- Our: Many co-parents don’t feel like they’re still in a family with their former partner… but their kids do.
- Family: By reducing conflict, the app helps kids feel more secure and comfortable in their co-parenting family.
- Wizard: Just like the logo, the “Wizard” part of our name signals transformation. If you’re stuck in a tough co-parenting situation, we genuinely believe the app can lower conflict and reduce stress. That’s why we come to work every day.
We love our name because it represents our mission and our values.
New look & feel. Same mission. Let’s move forward together.
We’re honestly so excited about our brand refresh because it connects our brand identity and mission—in other words, the reasons we’re passionate about our jobs—and our company’s investment in growth. We have big plans:
More growth.
More features.
More impact.
We want to help co-parenting families everywhere thrive.